The present invention relates to the use of superoxide dismutases for the prevention and/or treatment of organ failure in patients with polytrauma caused by accidents.
Multiple organ failure is the major cause of death in patients suffering from polytrauma caused by an accident who survive the first 24 hours after surgical treatment. The mechanisms which lead to this life-threatening complication are still mostly obscure. Consequently, it has not been possible in the past to devise a specific treatment or method of preventing of this life-threatening complication.
The clinical signs of sepsis and subsequent organ failure are attributed almost exclusively to the invasion of bacteria and the liberation of endotoxins. It has been suggested that the activation of the complement system by endotoxins is the initial event which subsequently leads to the formation of numerous deleterious mediators, such as oxygen radicals. Despite remarkable progress in basic research on septic shock, it remains unclear what importance is attributable to the effects of oxygen radicals in comparison with other mediators. In several animal studies of sepsis models like endotoxin shock, it could be demonstrated that treatment with superoxide dismutase exhibited some efficacy in relation to the course of the syndrome and to the survival rate.
However, this approach was not effective in experimental trauma models either in rats or in primates (Circ. Shock 31, abstr. no. 8; 1990), and it was consequently widely thought that oxygen radicals probably did not play an important role in the arena of mediators after this event.